Why did Maira Mora meet with Kupchyna?

Deputy foreign minister Alena Kupchyna met with head of the EU Delegation to Belarus Maira Mora.

The Belarusian MFA notes the meeting was initiated by the European side.

“Kupchyna and Maira Mora exchanged views on the current state and prospects of development of Belarus-EU interaction. Special attention was drawn to the provision of the EU technical aid to Belarus,” the MFA press service reports.

The website AFN says that according to an unofficial version, numerous contacts of the Belarusian MFA with the EU and US diplomats have the aim of solving the problem that hinders establishing another round of a dialogue between the democratic West and Europe's last dictatorship – lifting sanctions on foreign minister Uladzimir Makei and removing him from the EU blacklist.

Makei is now in Georgia holding unofficial meetings with foreign ministers of the Eastern Partnership member states. The recent developments give grounds to suppose that Makei will represent Belarus at the EaP summit in Vilnius in November, but he needs the travel ban to be lifted.

Neither the Belarusian authorities nor the EU representatives have doubts that removing Makei from the blacklist will be severely criticised by the democratic European  community. In this regard, Western diplomats already began to convince the Belarusian opposition that lifting sanctions on the Belarusian foreign minister is inevitable and useful for the future of independent Belarus explaining that “someone from the government has to represent Belarus at the summit. It's better be Makei than Lukashenka himself...”